lighttpd: Multiple vulnerabilities
— GLSA 200804-08

Multiple vulnerabilities in lighttpd may lead to information disclosure or
a Denial of Service.

Affected Packages

Package

www-servers/lighttpd on all architectures

Affected versions

< 1.4.19-r2

Unaffected versions

>= 1.4.19-r2

Background

lighttpd is a lightweight high-performance web server.

Description

Julien Cayzax discovered that an insecure default setting exists in
mod_userdir in lighttpd. When userdir.path is not set the default value
used is $HOME. It should be noted that the "nobody" user's $HOME is "/"
(CVE-2008-1270). An error also exists in the SSL connection code which
can be triggered when a user prematurely terminates his connection
(CVE-2008-1531).

Impact

A remote attacker could exploit the first vulnerability to read
arbitrary files. The second vulnerability can be exploited by a remote
attacker to cause a Denial of Service by terminating a victim's SSL
connection.

Workaround

As a workaround for CVE-2008-1270 you can set userdir.path to a
sensible value, e.g. "public_html".